Personal Assistant

The Arkansas IndependentChoices program developed two new tools. The Consumer-Directed training manual will provide users with ideas and suggestions on hiring, training, and managing a personal care attendant. The Personal Care Attendant handbook will provide users with training material that will help trainees do their job as a personal care attendant. Both manuals contain information about hiring, communication and management issues.

Colorado Real Choice Quality grantees designed this worksheet to guide clients as they \"shop around\" for the best provider agency to meet their needs. The worksheet suggests questions and criteria to use in evaluating agency services from a consumer perspective.

The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing received a Real Choice Grant for quality and created this brochure for consumers as part of their quality improvement activities. This tool provides strategies, resources, and guidelines for addressing home care concerns and, when necessary how to file complaints.

This AARP Public Policy Institute Issue Paper examines the efforts of South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin to improve home care quality by using a more person-centered approach. The initiatives described in this report point to the significant ongoing efforts that states are using to ensure quality care and support in the home. The challenge for state officials continues to be the creation of quality assurance systems that place consumer needs and goals for quality of life first.

The Center for Personal Assistance Services has prepared this case study of the Washington state Medicaid Personal Care Services (PCS) program. This report first presents an overview of the states characteristics, and then reviews the Medicaid program and management of HCBS programs including the personal care in waivers. The primary focus is on the organization and management of the Medicaid PCS optional state plan program. The report highlights eight best practices.

The report describes a program created by the Minnesota Legislature that provides long-term care choice counseling and services designed to help people live in community settings. Minnesota's Long Term Care Consultation (LTCC) services have made it possible for people of all ages to receive information about services, community residence, determination on whether they qualify for public services, and assistance in transitioning from an institution to a community setting.

States seek to streamline access to HCBS in order to expedite and simplify the experience of consumers seeking services so that they receive the services they need in community settings, preventing or delaying the need for institutional care. The design of the Washington long-term support system for older adults and people with physical disabilities provides examples for other states interested in simplifying or expediting access to long-term supports.

Over the last four years, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has been tracking the national development of the three main Medicaid HCBS programs that states can operate: (1) optional 1915(c) HCBS waivers, (2) the mandatory home health benefit, and (3) the optional state plan personal care services benefit. This brief presents expenditures and participant data on all three Medicaid HCBS programs and findings from the survey of policies on 1915(c) waivers.

Informal family assistance is often a key factor in determining whether a person with a disability can live in a community setting. However, the practice of paying relatives as caregivers remains controversial. This article reports findings from the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) in Arkansas, in which consumers receive a cash allowance to purchase personal assistance services. The article appeared in Marriage and Family Review, Vol. 1, No. 1/2

The State of South Carolina implemented a state-wide automated monitoring system whose real time data allows for monitoring & verification of the providers delivering services under the state's home and community-based services waivers. The toll-free number allows providers to check-in and check-out as they deliver services in a participant's home, while the database inferfaces with claims data to minimize fraudulent billing. The database has empowered waiver service recipients.